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Syrian Islamist rebels have launched attacks on Aleppo, according to state media, killing four people in the country’s second-biggest city as they intensify an offensive against areas held by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Syrian Arab News Agency published photographs of dust-coated buildings with blown-out windows, which it said showed the impact of shelling by what the government describes as “terrorist” forces on Friday.
The offensive by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is the most serious challenge to Assad’s authority in years at time when he faces mounting domestic and international pressure.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said on Friday that rebels led by HTS had entered five neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo with large numbers of fighters after detonating two car bombs.
The insurgents said they had overrun Syrian army positions and taken dozens of villages, cutting the country’s M5 highway — its most important north-south route — while advancing on Aleppo.
Using sophisticated weaponry including drones, analysts said the battle-hardened fighters had taken advantage of escalating Israeli attacks on militant groups affiliated with Iran that helped Assad crush the original rebellion.
As Israel and Lebanese militants Hizbollah fought a war over more than a year in neighbouring Lebanon, Israeli force struck weapons depots and supply routes in Syria to prevent the Iranian-backed group rearming via overland corridors from Iran.
The insurgents insist they are pushing back against an escalating campaign of shelling and air strikes by forces loyal to Assad, including by Hizbollah. The rebels’ offensive, and retaliation by forces supporting the regime including Russian air strikes, has displaced thousands of people. Between Tuesday and Thursday at least 12 civilians, including four children, were killed in the hostilities, the UN said in a report on Thursday. Humanitarian monitors say 14,000 people have been forced to flee.
Syria has been wracked by civil war since a 2011 popular uprising developed into an armed rebellion. With Russia and Iran’s support, Assad put down the rebellion and pushed an estimated 2mn civilians and remaining opposition fighters — including thousands of Islamist extremists — into the north-western region of Idlib.
HTS, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US state department, became Idlib’s dominant power and the most powerful remaining opposition faction. It runs services including a police force, and sought to portray itself as having a more moderate and domestically focused brand of Islamism than extremists in the territory who aligned themselves with international groups such as al-Qaeda.
Neighbouring Turkey has backed Syria’s opposition and exercises control over a swath of north-west Syria. Although Ankara is known to have a relationship with HTS, it has less control over the militants than other rebel groups.
After four years of stalemate, brokered by Russia and Turkey, the HTS-led fighters began their shock eastward offensive into regime-held territory on Wednesday.
Aleppo endured some of the worst fighting of the civil war. A devastating siege and Russian air strikes in late 2016 helped drive out rebels based in the city’s eastern areas, turning the war in Assad’s favour.
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